'Millionaire' quiz show aims to broaden appeal

THE creators of the ITV show Who Wants to be a Millionaire are to introduce variations of the quiz programme in an attempt to attract winners from a wider background.

Celador, the production company behind the show, is to make special programmes that give women and people from a working-class background more chance of winning.

Colman Hutchinson, the show's executive producer and a director of Celador, said yesterday: "We do want to encourage more black people and ethnic minorities."

In an effort to draw more women contestants, Celador has devised a women-only version of the show, he said. Other new formats will be developed over the coming weeks, but the nature of the variations are still under consideration.

Celador had conceived that the winners would be the sort of people who fared well at local "quiz nights", but the programme has been accused instead of being weighted in favour of the well-educated middle classes.

The complaints go beyond the winners. Two Home Counties - Hampshire and Berkshire - have accounted for 10 per cent of the contestants who have made it into the "hot seat", while the North-East has accounted for only three per cent.

Only 1.6 per cent of the contestants have come from ethnic minorities, which make up 6.4 per cent of the population.

Complaints about the show include claims that it takes too long to get through to the hotline, charged at 60 pence a minute, and that the questions are obscure and aimed at graduates.

David Edwards, a physics teacher from Staffordshire who had already won Mastermind, the BBC television contest, was the second person to win the full prize. He said that contestants on the show reflected a middle-class bias because of the cost of entering.

He said: "Inevitably, wealthier people are going to get through because they have the money to spend on telephoning the hotline." The programme favoured educated people "because it is a quiz".

Mrs Keppel also believes that the middle classes have an advantage. "It will always be the better educated who win the most on a show like this," she said.

The US version of the show - which Celador has sold worldwide - has been criticised. All nine winners have been white middle-class professional men.

The spate of bad publicity has coincided with a decrease in viewers and applicants. In the first series it received 30,264,053 calls, with a gross revenue of £26 million. At the end of series nine, the prize fund balance had fallen away.

The biggest winners, however, are behind the scenes. Jasper Carrott, the comedian, and his wife, Hazel, own a 15 per cent stake in Complete Communications, Celador's parent company, and have made £48 million from the show.

Chris Tarrant, the show's presenter, does not own a stake in the production but earns £1.3 million for his suspense-building role. Celador profits increased 31 per cent in the year 1999-2000 and its six directors have shared more than £1 million in dividends.